The War is Over Post World War I in Virginia Woolfs Mrs....

War is an important theme in Mrs. Dalloway (1925), a post World War I text. While on the one hand there is the focus on Mrs. Dalloway’s domestic life and her ‘party consciousness’, on the other there are ideas of masculinity and â€Å"patriotic zeal that stupefy marching boys into a stiff yet staring corpse and perniciously public-spirited doctors† , and the sense of war reverberates in the entire text. Woolf’s treatment of the Great War is different from the normative way in which the War is talked about in the post world war I texts. She includes in her text no first hand glimpse of battlefield, instead gives a detached description. This makes it more incisive because she delineates the after effects in personal ordinary lives. Judith†¦show more content†¦They enjoy a privileged, cocooned lifestyle and do not show any signs of worry about the war and its consequences unless they wished to put up a pretence of awareness, concern and sympath y as an instrument of deriving power and authority, like Lady Bruton. Mrs. Dalloway brushes aside the slight awareness that the war has created horror, havoc and turbulence, the confusion over the committee for the â€Å"Armenians or the Albanians† and the sense that it is impossible to return to the pre-war era. For her these were insignificant in front of Richard Dalloway’s proposal and romantic gestures, and the flowers. However, Lois R. Robley remarks that â€Å"the unfortunate events of Septimus’s suicide interrupts and disrupts Mrs. Dalloway’s party, forcing her and society to think about the death of the young men just returned from war, a war not so soon forgotten.† â€Å"So prying and insidious were the fingers of the European War† suggests the all encompassing nature of the war. No matter how much people might think that they are sheltered, no aspects have been left untouched. Once the war starts even something as personal as the à ¢â‚¬Å"geranium bed† is destroyed, nothing is spared. The most private as well as public spaces are intruded, damaged and scarred by the war. War affected not just soldiers but also civilians like the ‘cook’, Lady Bexborough and Miss Kilman. Miss Kilman had to struggle toShow MoreRelatedThe Central Value Connecting Mrs. Dalloway And The Hours1037 Words   |  5 Pages The central value connecting Mrs Dalloway and The Hours is an affirmation of life. 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